


Regret (Being the Last to Know)

by just_another_classic



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-08
Updated: 2015-12-08
Packaged: 2018-05-05 15:12:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5379866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_another_classic/pseuds/just_another_classic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of Hook's sacrifice, David and Snow reflect on their daughter's relationship with the fallen pirate and the role he played in their lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Regret (Being the Last to Know)

It’s over. They won. It was a pyrrhic victory, but a victory nonetheless. The Darkness is gone. Hook is dead. His daughter’s heart is shattered.

 

There will be no celebration tonight.

 

David feels tired, so very, very tired. He bones ache and his soul feels heavy, but he knows the moment he closes his eyes, his mind will be consumed with the sounds of Emma’s broken screams. He has never heard a sound more agonizing than that of the sobs of his daughter as she cried over her lover’s body. _I’m so sorry, Killian. I’m so sorry. He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead._ She may have vowed to let him go, let him die, but David knows she will be holding onto his memory for quite some time. He thought he felt paralyzed to save her as the Dark One. He was so very wrong. This is true paralysis, helplessness. He doesn’t know how to save her from this kind of heartbreak.

 

He hears a creak in the stairs, sees Snow quietly move her way down, carrying herself with the same bone-weariness he feels. Her eyes are red-rimmed, dark lines of makeup are smeared across her cheek. She tries to force a smile at the sight of him, failing miserably. She leans over to the baby carrier sitting on the floor, smooths her hand of their sleeping son’s forehead, before collapsing next to him on the unfamiliar couch, falling against his body.

 

“Emma’s finally asleep.” She whispers. David doesn’t bother to ask how his daughter is doing, because they both know the answer, don’t want to say it aloud. He wonders how long it will be before anyone of them can answer with the word “fine” for her truthfully. He desperately wants some way to erase her pain, make it go away, but there is nothing they can do. Only wait.

 

“David, how are you doing with all of this?” Snow’s question surprises him. She, of all people, should know how much pain he is in over their daughter. As if reading his mind, she answers, “And I’m not talking about Emma. How are you handling Hook’s…sacrifice. And don’t tell me you’re handing it, because I know you.”

 

“Why wouldn’t I be handling it?”

  
“Because you just watched your best friend die.”

 

David thought briefly of protesting – Hook certainly couldn’t be his best friend – but the words died quickly in his throat, because whatever he said would have been a lie. Hook was the closest person David had to a best friend. It’s been pointed out to him before, how he – the Prince – now keeps closest company with two men who have eschewed the bowing to authority, a pirate and a thief. Not the most princely of companions, but both Robin and Killian’s personal codes were more honorable than those of some knights he knew back in the Enchanted Forest.

  
“I nearly hit Grumpy,” he confesses lamely, “when Robin and I were picking up the kids. Robin was explaining what happened, and Grumpy said something about how Hook got what was coming to him…and I snapped.”

  
She looks up at him sympathetically, leans up to kiss him on the cheek, squeezes his hand. He doesn’t know how he could navigate this without her. He doesn’t want to dwell on the thought, or the reality that Emma is doing the same thing without her rock. Most recently, whenever Emma suffered periods of emotional turmoil, Hook would be the one to bring her around. She let him in. Now he was gone, and the task was once again left to them.

 

“While you were gone, I got a text from Regina.” Snow continues on, “She put something together to help get Henry to go down. He’s not doing well, either.”

 

She says the last part softly, and David feels a pang in his chest. He knew Henry and Hook had been growing closer. The two would go sailing on weekends. Hook teased Henry about girls. David can remember – finally remember – that in Camelot, he would see the two, heads pressed together, whispering conspiratorially over a newspaper. At the time, he felt slight jealousy at the bond the two were forming, still feeling the cloud of being “uncool.” (If anything, to a teenager, pirate with a ship certainly seemed cooler than a prince.) Now, the memories just bring pain.

 

“Did you know he helped pick out this house for her?” Snow asked, waving her hand to the room around them. David perked up at the new information. When they first discovered that Emma had absconded to a new home, he had written if off as her trying to raise walls away from them, find someplace to plot. He hadn’t considered something more. “Emma told me. Henry and Hook had an operation. This house was meant to be for their future together…as a family.”

 

“It’s a little big for just three people, don’t you think? Henry wouldn’t have been staying here full-time, so… _oh.”_ His voice trails off when his words catch up to him.  Had this revelation occurred under happier circumstances, he would have played the overprotective father card. Chastised Hook for not bringing him into the conversation. This was not one of those moments. Instead, he was holding his wife as his daughter slept upstairs, passed out from a cruel mixture of shock, grief, and exhaustion. This home, the one they were sitting in, was meant to be a house for a _family._ One his daughter would never have with the man with whom she had once planned it. The thought made David want to vomit.

 

“He gave her a ring.” He hears Snow’s voice crack, feels her body begin to shake against his. “It wasn’t an engagement ring, or maybe it was, she said he didn’t propose. But, oh David she won’t let go of it, she won’t let go.”

 

Snow cries against his chest, muffled sobs into his jacket. David wraps his arms around her, his own tears falling freely. “I feel like I failed as a mother…again. I should have been there for her.”

 

“There was no way we could have stopped this.” Maybe if David says this enough times, he will start to believe it.

 

“I could have supported her when she wanted to bring him back the first time. I could have helped her find a different way to save him. I could have believed in how much she loved him.” Snow says the last part with such grief and guilt.

 

“Hey, you were the one that had so much faith in him after she brought him back.” David counters, trying to encourage his wife, trying to alleviate her guilt in not completely trusting in the depth of her daughter’s love for the pirate. He knows that guilt, feels it all the same.

 

Snow shakes her head, eyes downcast. “But that’s it. I never really realized how much she loved him until that moment. Until then, I thought she was…rebounding.”

 

She almost spits out the last word, as if she hates the idea that she ever once held onto these thoughts. He doesn’t blame her, because the same thought crossed his mind a moment or two. It wasn’t that he doubted Hook and his love for Emma. His devotion to their daughter was apparent. Hook would have followed her to the end of the world or time. Emma, they weren’t so sure.

 

Had a month even passed after Neal’s funeral that Hook had arrived at their front door dressed in clothes of this realm and sporting two hands? They both had assumed that their daughter had only chosen the pirate because Neal died, that Emma had turned to the pirate waiting in the wings because her leading man was gone. They were wrong. Somewhere along the way, they had miscalculated, missed the signs that should have told them that Emma – whether she realized it or not – had chosen Hook a long time ago. That she loved him, truly loved him, and had now lost him.

 

“So what do we do now?”

 

“We be there for her,” he answers, “and make sure Hook made a sacrifice worth dying for.”

 

They owe him that much. He wasn’t just their daughter’s lost love. He wasn’t David’s best friend. He was family. He is family.

 

David just wishes he realized it before Hook was gone.


End file.
